Microsoft CEO: Taylor Swift AI deepfakes are “alarming and terrible”

The CEO of Microsoft has spoken out against the new AI-generated deepfakes of Taylor Swift that have been spread widely on social media this week.

• READ MORE: Beyond human imagination: How AI is pushing the boundaries of entertainment

A new AI filter, which changes users’ faces to look remarkably like Swift’s, went viral. Danae Mercer, a journalist and ambassador for the National Eating Disorder Association, said: “The technology used here is only going to get exponentially smarter. If you have even a little glimmer of ‘hmm, that doesn’t look like a real person’, give it a year, give it five months.”

“We need to be informed, we need to be aware, and we need to figure out ways to protect our little ones, because they are growing up in this strange, strange world.”

And now, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has raised further alarms. In an interview with NBC News, she said: “First of all, absolutely this is alarming and terrible, and so therefore yes, we have to act, and quite frankly all of us in the tech platform, irrespective of what your standing on any particular issue is — I think we all benefit when the online world is a safe world.”

“I don’t think anyone would want an online world that is completely not safe for both for content creators and content consumers. So therefore I think it behooves us to move fast on this.”

Expanding on what her organisation is doing to counteract the threat from AI, Nadella said that they are addressing “all of the guardrails that we need to place around the technology so that there’s more safe content that’s being produced. And there’s a lot to be done and a lot being done there.” She added that “law enforcement and tech platforms” can work together and that “I think we can govern a lot more than… we give ourselves credit for.”

The controversy over the new filter comes shortly after YouTube launched a new feature that will allow users to make music using AI voice clones of some of the world’s biggest artists.

In other Swift news, a man has been arrested and charged with harassment and stalking near the singer’s home in New York.